2007-01-05

Good Stuff From Yitz

My good friend Yitz has been downright prolific recently, writing from his own unique perspective merging science and Jewish mysticism.

Some representative and thought-provoking posts in the past few days:

  • lanterns in gravity wells

  • tomorrow was born yesterday

  • redefine crowdsourcing


  • The only catch is that many of his posts require knowledge of Jewish mystical terminology, but the first two posts I linked to here should be pretty comprehensible to everyone.

    --YY

    p.s. Yitz's former professor (who I found through Yitz's blog) has an interesting post called Unintelligent Operators, how certain economic assumptions break down when the consumers (us) act unintelligently.

    4 comments:

    yitz said...

    thanks for the unsolicitted post :)
    i find it hard to not solicit, but soliciting just seems wrong and anti what I'm trying to do..

    it's hard enough trying to stay ego-less about putting Torah on the web. if i let myself get carried away, who knows what kfirah i might write.. who knows if i haven't already? =7

    i decided to start posting more regularly, i think 2-3 posts a day makes a blog useful.. less and people don't expect much from it.. the trick is trying to keep content useful, meaningful and not shallow or just plain wrong when you post 3 times a day.. oh and not estrange my wife or lose my job :)

    YodaYid said...

    You're welcome - I'm happy point my readers to a blog that's both cool and written by a friend of mine :-)

    I never thought about it that way, but I guess have more at stake with your blog than I do. Although now that I'm not anonymous anymore... Anyway, I think it's an old writer's trick to stay vague. That way it's much harder to get into trouble if someone figures out what you're actually trying to say ;-)

    As you probably noticed, I post a lot less often than you - not because I don't have anything to say, but more because I need to get into a "mood" before I post. As in, "OK, I have to post this." I also avoid blogging about me blogging and my blogging habits (this convo is safely hidden in the comments section), since I don't really think anyone cares anyway ;-)

    yitz said...

    one of the reasons i used to not blog so much was because everythign i had to say i assumed it was being said by someone else, elsewhere.

    now, i try and say the things no one else is really saying.. though i'm sure most of the time i fail :)

    YodaYid said...

    "Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good" --Friedrich Nietzsche

    That's one of my favorite quotes :-)

    The fact is that even if what you're saying has been said a million times by a million people, you still have your own take on it, and you're also reaching people the other million may not be. So as far as your audience is concerned, it's completely original.

    At least half my posts are links to (hopefully) interesting articles with commentary. I'm personally more concerned about being interesting and relevant than original (not that the latter isn't a concern).

    Also, I justified starting this blog (actually the original LJ) as a public, non-personal journal: a snapshot of what I was reading about or interested in at the time, for my own use. So I focused simply on archiving what interested me (which is still my basic approach). That way at least one person is interested in what I write ;-)

    In your case, I have a feeling your blog helps you organize and articulate your thoughts. And there's nothing wrong with that (assuming you want those thoughts "out there").

    Be well,

    --YY